In November 2020, years of pent-up anger among young people against the political class reached boiling point. The expulsion of President Martin Vizcarra from office by Congressional members objecting to his mild reforms and his replacement by his deputy provoked mass demonstrations by Peruvian youth. These were violently attacked by the police. Worried and frustrated by the response to their machinations, Congress imposed a third President to try to calm the protests. ALVARO MICHAELS reports.
Peru’s economy has shrunk dramatically as a result of the Covid-19 disaster. Peru has one of the highest per capita Covid-19 mortality rates in the world. By April, the economy had shrunk 40% year on year. Between March and May, more than 2.3 million people lost their jobs in the Lima metropolitan area – almost half of the region’s workforce. Peru, the world’s second largest producer of copper, is headed for its worst economic contraction in a century. Mining represents 60% of the country’s exports, and production was drastically scaled back because of Covid-19 restrictions. Full operations were allowed to resume in May, but in November the economy was still 30% smaller than a year before. In June, the Archbishop of Lima warned that people faced starving to death as a result.
Constant Congressional infighting
Peruvian politics has always been rent with divisions. The recent struggle between the executive and legislative branch, President and Congress, initially resulted from opposition leader Keiko Fujimori’s refusal to recognise her defeat in the 2016 presidential elections, when her party won the most seats in Congress. She is the daughter of the corrupt, murderous and now imprisoned ex-President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000). In October 2018 she was accused of accepting $1.2m in illicit party funding for her unsuccessful 2011 presidential election campaign from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. The company claims that more than $29m was paid to Peruvian officials from 2004, including bribes to four former presidents: Alejandro Toledo, Ollanta Humala, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and Alan Garcia, who committed suicide.
90% of Peruvians polled say they disapprove of Congress, and 65% do not identify with any political party. President Kuczynski resigned in 2018. His deputy, Martín Vizcarra, succeeded him, and dissolved Congress in September 2019 after a fight over the appointment of judges. Elections in January 2020 returned the current members.
The March 2020 Covid-19 outbreak saw the economic shutdown leading to unpaid layoffs, the chaotic distribution of benefits and lack of hospital beds and respirators, causing anger among the workers. The Vizcarra government approved strengthening and deploying the Peruvian National Police (PNP) riot control forces. In the eight months following the imposition of a curfew in mid-March, hundreds of people in working class neighbourhoods have been arrested for violating its terms.
In Congress, 68 of the 130 elected members are currently under investigation for crimes such as embezzlement, abuse of authority, labour coercion, money laundering, resistance to authority and fraud. Vizcarra’s proposal of modest political reforms, including a prohibition on the immediate re-election of members of Congress and an end to parliamentary immunity for members under investigation, caused immediate Congressional opposition.
A block formed against Vizcarra, first charging him with political favouritism to a singer, and then on 9 November, impeaching him for ‘permanent moral incapacity’, based on unproven allegations of having taken bribes of 2.3m Peruvian Soles (£487,000) while governor of the mining region of Moquegua between 2011 and 2014, which he denies. His deputy, Manuel Merino, became interim president.
The new cabinet was made up of figures linked to the parties of former presidents Alberto Fujimori and Alan García, and to the business sector represented by the National Confederation of Private Business Institutions. It is a cabinet that turned its back on the Covid-19 crisis.
Mass youth protests
These maneouvres provoked a spontaneous eruption of outrage and protest by Peru’s leaderless youth. A massive national march against the parliamentary coup took place on 13 November, the second that week. The PNP attacked demonstrators as they advanced towards Congress. At least 107 people were injured by metal projectiles, marbles, tear gas bombs, concussion bombs, rubber bullets, toxic gases and live ammunition. One demonstrator was paralysed from the waist down, another lost an eye, while others may be permanently disabled. Two young men were killed by the PNP. They were Inti Sotelo Camargo, 24, shot in the chest, and Jack Bryan Pintado Sanchez, 22, hit by ten projectiles fired into his face and neck.
Reflecting recent Chilean protests, demands are being made to revoke the 1993 Alberto Fujimori constitution, and clean up Congress. With an election due on 11 April 2021, the ruling class faces an ongoing Chilean-style youth protest: 20- to 34-year-olds make up about 40% of those of mandatory voting age.
On 15 November, ten government ministers resigned because of public pressure, and cultural celebrities, journalists, and scientists walked off their jobs. They considered the Congress’ actions to be a coup d’état. Merino resigned that day.
On 16 November, thousands of young people held vigils in all Peru’s major cities in memory of the two murdered students. They demanded that those responsible for Merino’s illegal takeover and the violence against protesters be held accountable. Peru’s attorney general’s office has already opened an investigation into Merino’s policing, his prime minister and long-time right-wing politician Antero Flores Aráoz, and interior minister Gastón Rodríguez.
Another President
Another figure was now pushed into the Presidential role: the lawyer Francisco Sagasti, from the centre right Partido Morado (Purple Party), an ex World Bank executive. ‘On 16 November a shamefaced Congress chose Francisco Sagasti … the safest hands imaginable’ (The Economist, 19 November).
On 18 November Sagasti unveiled his cabinet, appointing a lawyer, Violeta Bermúdez, as prime minister, and Waldo Mendoza as economics minister. The critical question facing Sagasti is whether he will prosecute the national police who beat and shot peaceful protesters. This will mean changing a law passed this year exempting police and soldiers from prosecution for abuses.
The 2021 election
Presidential electoral candidates are emerging for next April’s vote. Peru’s corrupt politics opens the doors to new aspirants. A 38-year-old former goalkeeper is leading the race. George Forsyth, who last month quit as mayor of Lima district to run for the presidency, was leading polls in November with 16% in a crowded field of 23 candidates. He joined the National Restoration party, with its vague Christian and democratic aims, in September. Julio Guzman, disqualified from the 2016 presidential race, had 7% support, Veronika Mendoza, a leftist from Cuzco, and Daniel Urresti, a former interior minister, both had 6%. Keiko Fujimori had 5%.
The power struggle in Congress is particularly contentious over education. Opposition parties have repeatedly put forward motions to remove education ministers and to slow reforms affecting private universities. The political party Podemos (We Can) headed by Luna Gálvez with his private university Telesup, ex-minister Diez Canseco, a wealthy head of universities (St Ignatius Loyola), and César Acuña, a condemned academic plagiarist, leader of the Alliance for Progress coalition (22 of 130 seats in Congress) and owner of a consortium of universities obstruct the passage of a university reform to stop them cheating Peruvian youth.
The reality is that Peru’s political institutions are so weak that the economy operates without them, simply requiring a presidential figurehead, backed by the armed forces and police, to concede to business interests. The banking system rests on the mining sector, its saviour, and the latest contracts for lithium mining signed with Canadian, European and US interests will add to the copper, gold and silver mining industries that have been the centre of continuous wealth extraction from the country by its colonial oppressors and imperialist manipulators.
Peruvian youth have been inspired by the rejection of neoliberalism in the October 2019 Argentinian presidential election, the Bolivian people’s re-election of MAS in October 2020, the continued stand of youth in Chile against its billionaire president’s pro-business programme, the Venezuelan people’s confrontation with US imperialism, and the shining example of Cuban anti-imperialism. These struggles must now be pressed energetically by all socialist and communists, to create an international socialist programme to defeat imperialism.
